mined all belief in truth as an objective
reality, and, by similar reasoning, faith in the objectivity of the
moral law was also destroyed. The essential position of Socrates is
that of a restorer of faith. His greatness lay in the fact that he saw
that the only way to combat the disastrous results of the Sophistic
teaching was to refute the fundamental assumption from which all that
teaching flowed, the assumption, namely, that knowledge is perception.
Against this, therefore, Socrates opposed the doctrine that knowledge
is through concepts. To base knowledge upon concepts is to base it
upon the universality of reason, and therefore to restore it from the
{151} position of a subjective seeming to that of an objective
reality.

But though Socrates is thus a restorer of faith, we must not imagine
that his thought is therefore a mere retrogression to the intellectual
condition of pre-Sophistic times. It was, on the contrary, an advance
beyond the Sophists. We have here, in fact, an example of what is the
normal development of all thought, whether in the individual or the
race. The movement of thought exhibits three stages. The first stage
is positive belief, not founded upon reason; it is merely conventional
belief. At the second stage thought becomes destructive and sceptical.
It denies what was affirmed in the previous stage. The third stage is
the restoration of positive belief now founded upon the concept, upon
reason, and not merely upon custom. Before the time of the Sophists,
men took it for granted that truth and goodness are objective
realities; nobody specially affirmed it, because nobody denied it. It
seemed obvious. It was, thus, not believed on rational grounds, but
through custom and habit. This, the first stage of thought, we may
call the era of simple faith. When the Sophists came upon the scene,
they brought reason and thought to bear upon what had hitherto been
accepted as a matter of course, namely law, custom, and authority. The
first encroachment of reason upon simple faith is always destructive,
and hence the Sophists undermined all ideals of goodness and truth.
Socrates is the restorer of these ideals, but with him they are no
longer the ideals of simple faith; they are the ideals of reason. They
are based upon reason. Socrates substituted comprehending belief for
unintelligent assent. We may contrast him, in this {152} respect, with
Aristophanes. Aristophanes, the conservative, the believer in the